New Google Now Feature Aims at Amazon

Google wants to help brick and mortar retailers reach customers more effectively, especially on smartphones, as competition over product-related searches heats up with Amazon. It is updating its Google Now offering to aid that effort.

The app for Android-based devices, known in the past for things like flight and traffic reminders, can now point out products users might be interested in based on their searches, Google announced in a short blog post Monday.

Google Now’s new feature, a sort of auto-generated shopping list, could also be a way for Google to grab advertising dollars from local merchants that want to contact potential customers as they walk by.

It works like this: if a user searches for hiking boots on Google, say, then the Google Now app will use the location information inside a user’s Android smartphone to tell them that they are passing by a shoe store that may be carrying those boots.

In the post announcing the new feature, Google didn’t say how retailers will upload their inventory information or if the feature will become a new type of advertisement in the future.

The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google’s biggest initiative to compete more effectively with Amazon up to now has been product listing ads, or PLAs, which serve up images and prices of products inside Google search results instead of the company’s traditional ten blue links.

Such ads more closely resemble product search results on Amazon and help Google users avoid unhelpful clicks, which is particularly important on bandwidth and screen-size constrained smartphones.

The new Google Now location-based product notifications could be a natural extension of PLAs, since retailers already have to submit data to Google about the products they have in stock.

Also Google is expanding its shopping express service, which provides delivery service from stores like Costco and Target, to new cities including Manhattan and parts of Los Angeles.

And last week Google scooped up Rangespan, a U.K. startup that helps retailers change their product lineup based on online shopping trends.

The Google Now app is well known for looking inside users’ Gmail inboxes for airline boarding passes or Google calendars for appointments in order to prompt them about flight delays or traffic conditions.